From a photograph by Solomon D. Butcher of four daughters of rancher Joseph M. Chrisman, at their sod house in Custer County, Nebraska. From left to right, Harriet, Elizabeth, Lucie, and Ruth. Photographed in 1886.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Tag Cloud

Blogs and Blogging...

Check out the Zoom Cloud I've added in the sidebar. I have seen similar tag clouds on many blogs, and I decided to put one here just for fun.

On the first cloud or two when I was setting it up, some of the tags it came up with were just bizarre. I read in the FAQ that it bases the first cloud on the posts that happen to be in your site feed. Thus, it takes a period of time to develop a history and an accurate reflection of the blog's topics.

Someone had mentioned in the comments that you can force a lot of posts into your site feed by increasing the setting for the number of posts on the blog's main page and then republishing it. So, I tried that suggestion and now the cloud is a little more realistic.

I tried a couple of times to publish it with 999 posts on the front page. It kept giving an error, so then I published it with 200 posts on the front page. If anyone tried to visit my blog during all this, they probably had trouble loading the page.

Apparently Blogger thought I was spamming with those massive republishings. A word verification thing has now appeared on my "Create Post" page. I have to type the letters into the box before I can publish anything new.

I followed a link to a request form for Blogger to check my blog for spam. If they agree it's not spam, they'll remove the word verification thing. Hopefully they'll decide I'm innocent.

Update: I think they've also removed my blog from the "Recently Updated" and "Next Blog" lists. I also don't think they're publishing my site feed. I feel isolated.

Update: Yay! I got an e-mail from Google saying that I've been taken off the spammer list, and sure enough, I don't have a word verification box on the "Create Post" page now. And I think I was mistaken about the site feed, by the way. It was still being published.

IT IS STILL BEST to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasure; and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.(Laura Ingalls Wilder, 1867-1957)